The point of view, part 1

In yesterday’s post about Mayhem I spent some time considering the point of view from which the story was told. And it occurs to me that there might, perhaps, be some value in giving readers of this blog the benefit of such other knowledge about the use of viewpoint as I have acquired over the years.

In theory, a good working knowledge of viewpoint should be of value to any young, as-yet-unpublished writer who happens to stumble across these pages; and the discussion may also be of general interest to those who are no more than enthusiastic readers of fiction.

Fortunately, it so happens that, about a year ago, I completed a book about the technique of the short story which contains a chapter on viewpoint. In due course the book will published through my own small press, Kingsfield Publications, but for a variety of reasons I just haven’t got around to it yet. What follows is therefore a slightly modified version of chapter 6 of my forthcoming book.

I can’t claim that it is all easy reading. Viewpoint is a complicated technical matter, and like all technical matters it requires concentration and some thought.

Today I begin with an introduction to the subject of viewpoint; and over the next few days I shall discuss each of the major options from which a writer can choose when deciding how to tell a particular story.

Introduction

This chapter considers the problem of how to choose the best point of view for telling your story. And if you don’t really understand what I’m talking about in that first sentence, then don’t worry, because all will be made clear to you by the time you have read to the end of the chapter.

Over the past fifty years or so, I have read more or less every book that I could lay hands on which appeared to shed some light on how to write fiction (about 400 of them, all told). These analyses have varied from abstruse academic works at one end to crude ‘how to get rich quick by writing a novel’ manuals at the other. The books at either end of this spectrum tend to be useless. The valuable ones are somewhere in the middle.

As a result of this research I am in a position to give you the benefit of all that accumulated wisdom. The content of this chapter is therefore not so much the fruit of my own genius, but an amalgam of the thinking of all the great fictional theorists, expressed (I hope) in simple and clear language.

It may be useful if I mention here the names of some of the most valuable thinkers on this particular aspect of story-telling, so that you can read their discussions yourself, if you so wish.

First, I need to mention Thomas H. Uzzell, author of Narrative Technique (first published in 1923 and long since out of print). In that book, Uzzell writes extensively about the various possible points of view for relating a short story. Uzzell’s early ideas were refined some thirty years later when he considered full-length fiction, in his book The Technique of the Novel. In the remainder of this chapter I shall make extensive use of the principles which Uzzell sets out in both his major works.

A more recent viewpoint theorist is Albert Zuckerman, whose book Writing the Blockbuster Novel is essential reading for anyone who intends to tackle the longer form of fiction. (Don't be put off by the catchpenny title.) Al Zuckerman is one of the most successful literary agents in New York, and as it happens he was my own agent for about fifteen years. In 1980/81 I worked closely with Al when I was writing a thriller called No Holds Barred, so I have personal experience of the insights which he can bring to a writer’s work.

Mention of Al Zuckerman's book remins me that the best books on fictional technique are those written by literary agents. This is not really surprising because agents are the people who earn their living by actually selling books to publishers, and it is therefore very much in their interests to think hard about what makes a book tick. Agents who have written useful books on writing fiction include Paul R. Reynolds, Malcolm MacCampbell, Scott Meredith, and Carole Blake.

As mentioned above, I have also sought help from the academic writers on the subject of viewpoint – though the academics are, as usual, much less helpful than the more down-to-earth practitioners.

Academics, by and large, consider that they are letting themselves down if they write anything which can be understood by the ordinary reader. They don’t feel they’re doing things right unless their prose is well nigh incomprehensible.

You might read, for example, a work by Gerard Genette, entitled Narrative Discourse. In that book, Genette identifies three types of prose, which he refers to as non-focalised, internally focalised, and externally focalised. The terminology is not what you might call instantly clear, is it? So, what is Genette actually talking about?

Well, when you dig down through the layers of obfuscation, you discover that what Genette calls non-focalised fiction is simply a story told from the point of view of the classic omniscient narrator (of whom more below). Internally focalised prose is a story told from the point of view of a particular character. And an externally focalised story is one which is told in the Hemingway manner, with an account of the events being given from the viewpoint of one of the characters, but without any comment or thoughts from that character.

The analysis which Genette gives us is interesting, up to a point, and useful, up to a point. But, for the record, it is an incomplete and faulty analysis. What is more, Genette offers us a discussion which is couched, like most academic discourse, in obscure language; reading the thing is damned hard work, and in the end you discover that it’s scarcely worth the trouble, because other writers have set out the same ideas with greater clarity.

Other academic writers who have dealt with the question of viewpoint include Wayne C. Booth (The Rhetoric of Fiction), and Tzvetan Todorov (The Poetics of Prose). Wade through these stodgy tomes if you wish, but you won’t find anything there which tells you more than is contained in the rest of this chapter. And you will find that my description – even if I do say so myself – is a great deal easier to follow than the output of the academic elite.

It is high time we got down to business.

In the good old days, writers on the art of fiction would limit themselves to advising you that there were two ways – and only two ways – in which you could tell a story. You could either write it in the first person, or in the third person. Either you wrote: I opened the door and walked into the room, where I fell over a dead body. Or you wrote: He opened the door and walked into the room, where he fell over a dead body.

It must have been nice to live in such simple, untroubled times. Today, of course, we know that things are not that simple. Dear me, no. So let me end this brief introduction to the subject of viewpoint in fiction by saying that there are three principal points of view from which a story may be told. Three principal ones, and many possible variations upon those three. The first of these three viewpoints is the omniscient.

And for details of that, tune in tomorrow.

Occupied France and viewpoint in fiction

In the second world war the French more or less surrendered to the invading German army without much of a struggle; certainly there was no attempt to defend Paris on a street by street basis. Thereafter, the Germans pretty much ran France however they wished, at least until the Allied armies landed on the beaches in 1944.

This period of French history has proved a rich background for fiction, most notably perhaps for Alan Furst. But another writer who has used this time and place for a series of thrillers (or whodunits if you will) is J. Robert Janes.

Janes is the author of at least eight novels featuring Jean-Louis St-Cyr of the Surete Nationale and Hermann Kohler of the Gestapo. Together this unlikely pair investigate crimes, chiefly murder, threading their way as best they can through the dark alleyways of occupied France. They find themselves threatened on all sides by both the Resistance and the various factions within the occupying forces, the Gestapo versus Wehrmacht and so forth.

I have been meaning to dip into this series for some time, and have finally got around to reading Mayhem, which seems to be the first volume. In a brief note at the beginning, Janes tells us that, although he has used actual places and times, he has seen fit to change these at will. During the occupation of France the everyday crimes of murder and arson continued to be committed. And so the author has merely asked himself, By whom and how were they solved?

Well, Mayhem contains plenty of mayhem; perhaps there are too many events for credibility at times. The characters are well drawn and the extreme difficulties of the times, for all parties, are made clear. So far so good. By and large, this is a fairly entertaining crime novel. I do, however, find one fairly serious drawback with it. This relates to the author's use of viewpoint.

Janes chooses to write from what may be called the omniscient viewpoint. In other words, the author sits in God's chair and looks down on all the characters; he can see precisely what each and every character is thinking and feeling at any given time, and he can tell us, the readers, whatever he wishes.

This is all very well up to a point. As techniques go, this was probably perfectly acceptable for a mainstream novel in the nineteenth century. But Mayhem is a late twentieth-century thriller/whodunit, and I don't think the technique works at all well in that context.

To begin with, all novel readers these days have seen and absorbed a vast amount of stories told through the visual media, chiefly television. And when we watch a drama unfolding on the box we see it from a particular viewpoint: the camera's viewpoint; and the camera usually appears to show us events as witnessed by a participant, or a bystander.

In some mysterious way, which I do not claim to understand, this circumstance has influenced our reading of fiction. The result is that fiction is now much more effective if it is told from the viewpoint of one or other of the major characters, rather than from the point of view of God. Most experienced novelists, especially thriller writers, now relate each chapter from the point of view of one character, and one character only -- usually the character on whom the emotional load is greatest in the events being portrayed. The viewpoint character can change, but only after a distinct break, as in the transition from one chapter to another.

If you want to read a book in which this technique is used to perfection, read Ken Follett's early novel The Key to Rebecca.

There is another problem relating to viewpoint which is uniquely relevant to whodunits, thrillers, and other stories in which there is an element of mystery. If the story is truly being told from the viewpoint of God, there can logically be no mystery at all, because God knows everything. If therefore, the author writes as God, he has to cheat, because if he tells us what every character is thinking and feeling then he would have to tell us what the murderer is thinking and feeling too. This is certainly possible, but not if you want to retain the mystery element.

The classic solution to the choice of viewpoint in mystery fiction has been to write the stories from the point of view of the detective's sidekick. The Sherlock Holmes stories are, of course, told by Dr Watson; the amazing feats of detection performed by Nero Wolfe are explained to us by Archie Goodwin. And so on. The loyal sidekick is privy to all the key events in the story, but he is never quite sure what the great detective is thinking, and so the element of mystery is preserved until the final revelation.

Back to Mayhem. I must say that I found Janes's use of the omniscient viewpoint quite disturbing, and I suspect most readers would also be jarred by it, though without understanding why. In key scenes Janes often jumps from telling us what one side of a dispute is feeling and thinking, to telling us what the other side is thinking and feeling; and for my money that doesn't really work at all. It interferes with the smooth flow of the story, and leaves us feeling less interested in the characters rather than more so.

Apart from that, Mayhem is an interesting book, telling us a good deal (much of it unpleasant) about the realities of life under an occupying power.

Neil Gaiman: Coraline

Neil Gaiman's Coraline is a book which has attracted a mixed reception -- see the Amazon comments, for instance. But Terry Pratchett has described it as a masterpiece, and I think he is right. Philip Pullman admires it too.

Before we get too carried away, however, we might just remember what the word masterpiece really means. In mediaeval days, tradesmen or craftsmen in particular fields often formed guilds, which were trade unions, of a sort, and were the means by which (among other things) the established members of the trade controlled the level of membership of their profession. So, for example, we might have a guild for carpenters or silversmiths. At the end of a long apprenticeship, a young man was expected to produce a 'masterpiece', i.e. a piece of work which proved that he had mastered his craft and was capable of taking his place among the recognised practitioners.

It is in this sense that I agree that Coraline is a masterpiece. It is quite clearly a book written by someone who knows exactly what he is doing, what he wants to achieve, and how to achieve it. Whether an individual reader will enjoy the book is, as usual, a matter of taste.

Coraline is one of those works which are ostensibly aimed at children but which can be read equally well by adults. This particular story is about a small girl, Coraline, who goes through the wrong door (as children do in these stories) and finds herself in a mysterious and threatening world from which it is difficult to escape.

There is nothing particularly original about this tale, any more than the plot of a whodunit is likely to be original. But, as in other genres, the success or failure depends upon how the work is handled. And for my money Gaiman handles his material supremely well. Whether you would actually want your child to read it will depend on the child's age and degree of emotional toughness; the book might generate nightmares in some. And I wasn't entirely convinced by the finality of the ending. In other words, I have a horrid feeling that that nasty thing might come back. But perhaps that's the point; maybe there is to be a Coraline II.

As for links to further info about Gaiman and Coraline -- well, a quick google will bring you a superfluity of possibilities. Suffice it to say that Gaiman is a well established writer with a large coterie of active fans. You might try the Mouse Circus for starters, though it takes a fearful long time to load.

Ulysses in Nighttown -- again

On 30 September I wrote an account of a theatrical production called Ulysses in Nighttown, which I saw at the Rooftop Theatre in Greenwich Village, New York, in July 1958.

Ulysses in Nighttown was, as the title suggests, a play adapted from the novel Ulysses by James Joyce. As part of my researches for the 30 September post, I discovered, to my surprise, that the script of the play had been published in 1958 by Random House. (Bibliographical details are given at the foot of this post.) And, with the aid of abebooks.com, I was later able to buy a copy and read it.

If you are at all interested in Ulysses, I suggest that it would be well worth your time to do the same. For one thing, it will give you a fresh insight into the novel, because the adaptation very neatly encapsulates every major theme of the book, and all in 120 pages.

There is an introduction by Padraic Colum, barely a page in length, which describes the principal characters of the book/play in a succinct way which is unequalled to my knowledge. The final paragraph reads as follows:

Two men, one a man of middle age, one a youth. In the city directory they are Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus; in a more ancient book they are Ulysses and Telemachus, the father in search of the son, the son in search of the father.

Thus is all made perfectly clear. Note, please, that I do not say that it makes any sense. Merely that what Joyce was trying to do is made perfectly clear. I myself have never been very struck by the Bloom/Ulysses parallels, or impressed by the way in which the structure of the book matches (allegedly) that of the great classic work. But at least we can see here what is supposed to be going on.

Of course it has to be admitted that there were great advantages to Joyce in following Homer's classic model. In the first place he didn't have to think of a plot; and secondly he was, of course, providing literary critics with plenty to talk about. Joyce, I suspect, was absolutely no fool, and he knew that, if you want to be the hot topic of discussion in the literary salons of this world, you need to supply the raw material for the chattering classes to chew on.

The play begins, as does the novel, in the Martello Tower; and although we quickly move to the Nighttown sequence, which in the book comes some 400 pages from the beginning, the adapter cleverly incorporates passages from earlier and later in the book. Thus at the start of Act Two we have part of Molly Bloom's famous soliloquy which comes at the very end of the novel. We also meet Blazes Boylan and hear about Bloom's dead son, Rudy.

Even on page one, barely ten lines into the script, we have the first of no doubt many other literary references. 'God,' says Mulligan, 'isn't the sea what Algy calls it; a great sweet mother?'

Algy, as you doubtless recognise, is Algernon Charles Swinburne, and the reference is to his poem The Triumph of Time:

I will go back to the great sweet mother,
Mother and lover of men, the sea.
I will go down to her, I and none other,
Close with her, kiss her and mix her with me;

And if that doesn't draw you into the play, nothing will.

When reading this script I was continually astonished by how clearly I remember the original production. OK, so I was a very impressionable young man at the time, but when you consider how much else I have long forgotten it is surprising how easily the images come to mind. However, you have to remember that Bloom was played by the immortal Zero Mostel. And it is quite apparent to me, in retrospect, that without Mostel's comic genius this might be a very wearisome play to watch.

Not that you are likely to watch it. The cast list includes 62 named characters, and even with extensive doubling it doesn't seem possible to mount a production without at least 16 (highly talented) actors. So don't expect it to come to your local theatre soon. It is also, of course, a mighty difficult piece to direct.

Details of the printed version of the play are as follows: James Joyce's Ulysses in Nighttown, dramatized and transposed by Marjorie Barkentin under the supervision of Padraic Colum. Published by Random House, New York, 1958.

Obscenity, censorship, and free speech

Yesterday I talked about Steve Holland’s excellent book The Mushroom Jungle. And one of the several ways in which it is excellent is in describing one of the fits of madness which periodically overcome the English.

Elsewhere in this blog I have expressed my conviction that at least parts of the English population were driven insane by the two world wars which occurred in the first half of the twentieth century. In world war I, most of the best, bravest, and brightest young men were killed off. In world war II, a similar culling occurred, albeit on a lesser scale. What this meant was that, come the 1950s, there were men in high places (and they mostly were men) who had been born in, say, 1895.

These men were often second- or third-rate at whatever it was they were doing: the law, medicine, politics. But they had risen to the top because, through some quirk of fate, they had survived. Not only were they second-rate, but, as indicated above, their experiences had driven them insane. They were not barking, baying at the moon-type screwy, but they were very definitely a bit odd.

It was not difficult, among these men, to find a determination to pretend that none of the nastiness of the two world wars had really happened. The true history of events, culminating in atom bombs and Auschwitz, was, after all, too dreadful for all but the strongest minds to contemplate. As a result, many of the men in high places chose to pretend that none of the unpleasantness had taken place at all; either that, or they chose to believe that it was possible to wind back the clocks, and to recreate in English society of the 1950s the kind of moral atmosphere and social structures which had existed fifty years earlier.

Such attempts were, of course, bound to fail. But that didn’t stop men trying. And in The Mushroom Jungle Steve Holland gives us the best description that I have ever read of how these crazy ambitions were attempted in the book world. The facts are reasonably well known, but Holland gives us fresh insights and new detail.

In 1951, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe was appointed as Home Secretary. He was one of those with many screws loose, and he used his position of power to attack ‘the forces of evil’ on three fronts. He began a witch-hunt against homosexuals; he ordered the harassment of prostitutes; and he declared it his intention to stamp out ‘pornography’. In all these areas, Maxwell-Fyfe was supported by the Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Theobald Mathew; and Mathew was assisted by a sidekick called Mervyn Griffith-Jones.

As far as ‘pornography’ was concerned, the most obvious targets were the publishers of the paperback originals who had come into being since the end of the war. These new publishers were putting out hundreds of original stories, most of them with covers featuring an attractive young woman (though never naked, of course, or anything like it); and the stories often had titles, such as Virgin Dancer, or The White Slave Racket, which gave promise of sauciness within.

In fact, of course, nothing published in the 1950s was ever remotely ‘pornographic’ in the modern sense of the term. To begin with, it was quite impossible to use words such as fuck, shit, or piss, without ending up in prison. No printer would risk his skin by setting the words in type. And such descriptions of sexual activity as were printed were always highly restrained, often ending at the bedroom door, or couched in the most general terms. ('His passion overwhelmed her.')

Nevertheless, the cheap paperbacks were an easy target, and in 1953 the authorities launched 197 prosecutions against ‘obscene’ literature. In many cases the whole of a publisher’s stock might be subject to a destruction order; the company could well be made to pay a crippling fine; and, most serious of all, the proprietor could be sent to prison. Several of these publishers of cheap paperbacks actually did serve prison sentences; and, even if they didn’t, the fine put them out of business.

The futility of these prosecutions is well demonstrated by the fact that, once a book was ‘banned’ in one part of the country, sales of that book promptly rose everywhere else. ‘Since the [Hank Janson] books were first brought to the public’s attention,’ said one bookseller, ‘there has been a rush to buy them. I sold all I had in an hour.’

The day came, however, when the authorities overreached themselves. It was one thing to prosecute publishers who were issuing cheap paperbacks, which were sold to working-class readers through newsagents’ shops. The men who operated in that field had few resources: they could not afford good lawyers, and they had no friends in high places. It was quite another thing, however, to prosecute respectable, long-established firms, operating through traditional book-trade channels. The men behind these companies certainly could afford a good barrister; what was more, they had friends and neighbours who were actively involved in politics, the law, and other areas of influence; and, when they believed that they were publishing literary fiction of a high order, they did not take at all kindly to being labelled as anti-social smut merchants.

In 1954, the previously respectable and blameless firms of Heinemann, Hutchinson, Arthur Barker, Werner Laurie, and Secker & Warburg, were all prosecuted for publishing ‘obscene’ novels. One firm chose to plead guilty; another was acquitted by the jury in thirteen minutes flat; two other firms were found not guilty after a considerable struggle; but Hutchinson, and their author, were both fined £500.

These five trials made it abundantly clear to all but the screwiest of Englishmen that the law on ‘obscenity’ was a complete mess, and needed review. The result, very eventually, was a new Obscene Publications Act, which became law in 1959.

Even then the authorities did not give up. When Penguin decided to publish D.H. Lawrence’s famous sex novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover, the by now experienced prosecution team went into action once more.

The prosecution was led by Mervyn Griffith-Jones, a complete arsehole if ever there was one. He had a ten-year track record of success in prosecuting so-called dirty books, and he was hot stuff when it came to bullying shabby little men in shiny suits. But when he came up against the heavy troops marshalled by Penguin, he found himself on the end of a well-deserved beating.

It was Griffith-Jones, of course, who famously asked the jury whether Lady Chatterley’s Lover was the kind of book that they would want their servant, or their wife, to read – thus demonstrating beyond all possible doubt that he was living so far in the past that he was positively out of sight.

As the whole world knows, the publishers of Lady Chatterley’s Lover were found not guilty of publishing an obscene book. From then on, the great British public was perfectly free to read about people fucking each other to their hearts’ content, and no publisher need ever again worry about whether to delete any of the so-called four-letter words.

But let it not be forgotten, please, that there are still plenty of people around who would gladly wind back the clock again, even at this late hour. Those of us who value the freedom of speech would be well advised to keep that in mind.

Steve Holland: The Mushroom Jungle

Steve Holland's The Mushroom Jungle (published by Zardoz Books) is not a new book; it was first published in 1993. It tells the story of an extraordinary period in British publishing -- a period of about ten years during which a few enterprising businessmen, with no previous background in publishing, were able to supply cheap paperback books to working-class readers and make a modest profit.

During the second world war, paper for books was in short supply, but there were plenty of people who wanted to read. This did not go unnoticed. And in particular there was a whole class of readers who were not considered at all by the traditional British publishers. For want of a better term we will call these people working-class readers.

Once the war was ended, in 1945, a number of businessmen thought that it ought to be possible to exploit this unsatisfied demand. For the most part, the 'publishers' who operated in this 'mushroom jungle' were not publishers in the usual sense of the term. They were very ordinary men, who might otherwise have been taxi-drivers or greengrocers, but they recognised a commercial opportunity when they saw one, and they were ready to take it. Often they had little or no capital, and they lived from week to week. Nobody got rich.

The books which these new publishers issued were nearly all originals. They were usually between 112 and 128 pages in length, and contained approximately 40,000 words. The paper on which the books were printed was flimsy and cheap, and the books sold chiefly on the strength of their garish covers. They were sold mostly through newsagents and hardly ever through the normal book-trade channels; they were bought, read, and passed from hand to hand in factories and shops, until, before long, they simply fell to pieces.

As for the writers who supplied the books… Well, they too were very ordinary men. Often they were journalists who had served for four or five years in the military and had then discovered, on their return home, that there were no jobs to go to. So they sat down and they hammered out a novel of, say, 40,000 words, in a week or so. Ten days at the most. If they did that, week in and week out, they could just about make a living wage.

One writer used to work from 4 a.m. until noon, during which time he would neither eat nor drink. Another writer sold 170 stories, of which half were between 20,000 and 65,000 words. His output peaked at 12,000 words in one day; in that same week he wrote 55,000 words of gangster fiction in five days.

All in all, the books which were produced in this way were hardly noticed by the traditional book trade, and were certainly never reviewed. Not surprisingly, given the speed at which they were written, these paperback originals are generally reckoned (by modern critics) to be some of the feeblest and least convincing fiction ever to appear in print. But they were read. People bought them by the hundred thousand, because they were cheap and because they met the demand for dramatic and exciting stories.

Westerns and gangster novels set in the Bronx were cheerfully written by Englishmen who had never been any further west than Bristol. Science fiction and romances were also favourites.

Often the covers, if nothing else, gave promise of saucy stories within, but by modern standards there was little in the way of sex scenes. As was usual in those far-off days, the man took the girl off to some hotel or other, closed the door and… a line of dots led us to the next morning.

In 1950, paper supplies were deregulated, which fuelled a further boom in this market, a market which was so far below the notice of serious book people that it went almost wholly unremarked.

But in the end, of course (by about the mid 1950s), the mini-boom in down-market pulp fiction inevitably ground to a halt. It was killed by a number of factors. These were, in no particular order: the ending of a post-war ban which had prevented American publishers from exporting fiction to the UK; a printer’s strike, which deprived the paperback publishers of income; and the widespread prosecution of many of the books on the grounds of ‘obscenity’ – though in reality, of course, all the books were models of restraint when compared with what appears in print today. I shall say more about this latter development tomorrow.

This is the story which Steve Holland tells, and he tells it remarkably well. All in all, he has produced a fascinating account of a period in publishing history which will never be repeated. His book is marred somewhat by numerous typos, but it holds the attention nevertheless. And it provides plenty of food for thought for those writers who are wondering what it is that holds readers to the page. Hint: it ain’t anything that they can teach you at the University of Iowa.

Payola in the book business

About three years ago, the Spectator published an article which 'exposed' some of the ways in which UK publishers obtain publicity for their books. (The ArtsJournal provides a brief summary: In Blurbs We Trust.)

In short, what happens is that publishers pay booksellers to label a particular novel (or non-fiction work for that matter) as 'book of the month'.

According to the original Spectator article, W.H. Smith charges £10,000 to call a book ‘Read of the Week’. Books etc.’s ‘Showcase’, and Borders’ ‘Best’, both cost £2,500. And Amazon demands £6,000 for its ‘Book of the Month’ endorsement. To have a book called the ‘Latest Thing’ will set you back £15,000, and for an author to be labelled ‘Fresh Talent’ costs £2,850.

As I recall, there was come mild quibbling over the figures when they were first published, but no one seriously contested the general principle, namely that UK publishers were paying in order to have their books given favourable labels by the bookshop chains. And, of course, they were also paying just to have books piled in a highly visible position, right by the door.

In 2001 this was news, in a sense. Most people, particularly most writers, hadn't realised what was happening. And I can't say that I had realised what was going on either. However, for anyone who bothered to think about it, the truth should have been blindingly obvious. We have known for years that supermarkets were demanding that their suppliers should pay them for giving their products a favourable shelf position, so why should the book business be any different?

Oh, you thought that publishing was run by gentlemen, did you? And I as good as confirmed the fact yesterday with my comments on the general way in which business is conducted. Well yes. Publishers may be gentlemen (on a good day). But the big booksellers live and die on the high street, and they are the ones calling the tunes here. As are the supermarkets too, of course. And the publishers have the bruised balls to show for it.

Anyway, the thought that crosses my mind is this -- and I ask a rhetorical question, to which I do not necessarily expect an answer. What is the difference between booksellers demanding payments from publishers, on the one hand, and the good old payola racket in the music business on the other?

A few words of explanation are, I think, required for younger readers. Back in the 1950s, in the United States, there were several thousand radio stations. It was also obvious that, if you wanted to create a hit record, and make lots of money, you had to persuade a large number of those stations to play your record. And the simplest way to persuade the disc jockeys to play your record every hour on the hour was to bribe them. This was known as 'payola'. The payment was sometimes in the form of cash, and sometimes in kind, e.g. a bag of cocaine or a freebie with a fancy call-girl.

In the course of time, the American courts made payola illegal. However, the rewards for selling lots of records remain great, and modern recording companies have developed new ways of exercising persuasion. It is these practices which, in the last week, have been called into question by the New York state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer.

Presumably, the legal position in the UK is that supermarkets can bully their suppliers without government interference, and the bookselling chains are likewise free to 'offer publishers the opportunity' to have their books drawn to the public's attention. But what is the difference between paying £10,000 (or whatever) to have a book labelled 'read of the week', and a good old-fashioned bribe?

Well, obviously, one is 'legal' and goes through the accounts office, and the other one doesn't. But apart from that I can't see any difference at all myself.

Not, please note, that I am at all exercised about this particular book-trade practice. In 2001, when the news broke, there was a certain amount of huffing and puffing: some novelists wrote stiffish letters to The Author. But to me it seemed no different from a publisher paying for advertisement space in a newspaper.

However, it may well be that some of the smaller publishers feel thoroughly aggrieved about this. They can't afford £10,000 to plug a book, or even £1,000. And perhaps they might prefer a more level playing field. And there is also an opportunity here, surely, for some bright young prosecutor, or MP, to make a bit of a name for herself by pressing for legislation.

Remember you read it here first.

Penguin and the culture of politeness

On 26 June I noted in these august columns that the ancient and honourable UK publishing firm of Penguin was having trouble with its warehouse. It had opened a new 'state of the art' distribution centre in Rugby, all fully computerised, of course. And the problem was, the, er -- well, the software didn't work.

Bookshops ordered books and Penguin couldn't supply them. Not, at any rate, by using its new improved system. It could only supply books by employing lots of men to scurry around with baskets and collect the books by hand, in much the same way as farmers' wives used to go round collecting eggs. Result: endless delays, inefficiencies, and lost sales on a grand scale.

By any standards, this situation was a business catastrophe of the first order. Back in June, Publishing News estimated that the likely loss to Penguin was somewhere between £20m and £30m. Which is a lot of money. And the authors would lose proportionately, of course.

Now Publishing News brings us up to date. Penguin's authors have recently had their royalty cheques for the half year ending 30 June. And they are not happy. Most authors have lost one third of their expected income; some are down by an estimated half. The Society of Authors and the Association of Authors' Agents are thinking of taking legal action against Penguin to obtain suitable compensation.

However, the point about all this which interests me is one which was raised recently by Michael Cader in his Publishers Lunch newsletter. He said recently that, while at Frankfurt, he asked more or less everyone from England 'Why hasn't there been more howling about the mess at Penguin's new warehouse?'

Mr Cader does not tell us what answer he got, but I can give him one. The answer is that a British writer who jumps up and down and complains about the performance of his publisher is a writer who pretty soon isn't going to have a publisher.

The whole culture of British publishing is still gentlemanly and ladylike. It takes its tone from the mannerisms of public life in the UK fifty years ago. I once knew a senior civil servant in the Treasury, and he remarked to me, 'You have to remember that I come from a culture in which to say, "I'm afraid I can't quite agree with you on that" means "I shall fight to the death to prevent you achieving your aims."'

The same applies in publishing. Once, years ago, when I was still working through an agent, I typed out on one side of a sheet of paper a least of key terms which I would require from a publisher if the publisher and I were to do a deal on a proposed book. I showed this sheet of paper to my then agent.

The agent was one of the most tactful and discreet people that I have ever met in my life. She read the note, and for a second a frown almost crossed her face. Then she said quietly, 'You know, Michael, publishing is a very friendly business.'

What she meant by that was, 'Don't try to be too brisk and businesslike, because it won't go down well.' And she was right, of course.

In dealing with British publishers it is bad form to be businesslike. What happens is that, if your agent puts in a great deal of hard work, you eventually get to have lunch with an editor. Lunch, please note, not a meeting. When attending this lunch you do not present the editor with an agenda for discussion. Dear me, no. What happens is that you have a pleasant time talking about all sorts of things, and if all goes well both sides emerge with a nice warm feeling and a vague understanding that it might be possible, in due course, to do a book together.

The paperwork, if it ever arrives, may well include, in the small print, a number of clauses which a thoughtful and well informed writer might feel inclined to question. But if you do, you will be told in rather hurt tones that, 'Those are our standard terms, I'm afraid, and we really couldn't vary those.'

The only sensible response to that statement is: Why the bloody hell not? What's so holy about 'standard terms'?

Mind you, an experienced writer soon realises that, in at least 95 cases out of 100, a publishing contract isn't worth the paper it's written on. For example, the contract will normally call for the book to be published within 12 months of signature. But supposing 13 or 14 months go by, and the book has not yet appeared in print (not an unusual occurrence). What are you going to do then -- take your book away and offer it to someone else? I hardly think so.

The trouble with British publishing, in short, is that everyone is too damn nice. Particularly the authors. A little hard-nosed business acumen would not go amiss. The Times on Saturday quotes the general secretary of the Society of Authors as saying 'Individually, authors like the staff at Penguin and they're reluctant on their own to make too much of a meal of it.'

See what I mean? They're reluctant to make much of it because they know that a writer who asks too many awkward questions soon gets labelled as 'difficult'. And it is but a short step from being labelled 'difficult' to being labelled 'Not wanted on Voyage'.

And so, as far as the Penguin warehouse nonsense is concerned, it is not at all the done thing to enquire who, by name, is responsible for this debacle. And who, by name, has been sacked for it. After all, everyone makes mistakes.

Booker and all that

You are probably aware that, on Wednesday evening last, a writer was handed a cheque for £50,000 -- and that, it has to be admitted, is a considerable sum of money. This particular cheque was handed to the winner of the Man Booker prize, which is (I think) the UK's largest prize for writers.

The Man Booker prize goes exclusively to literary novels; science fiction, crime, fantasy and romance are not normally considered by the judges, though there are exceptions: Harry Potter got on the short list one year.

Is it my imagination, or did the whole thing get less coverage than usual this year? Maybe it's just me not bothering to read about it, because the entire enterprise is, I have to say, a matter of complete indifference to me. Long years of experience have proved that I do not usually enjoy literary novels. But the whole Booker business did seem to be rather more low-key than usual this year.

As for the winner, Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty, even the literary editor of the Times didn't like it much, claiming that Colm Toibin's The Master was infinitely superior.

Well, that's as maybe. I doubt whether I would enjoy either of them.

It is worth noting here, however, that the other genres also have their prizes. The Crime Writers' Association award 'Daggers' of varying quality, and the top prize comes with a cheque for £3000. Similarly the Romantic Novelists' Association gives an annual prize for the best romantic novel of the year (or it used to -- the web site looks a bit out of date). And the British Science Fiction Association likewise selects a 'best novel' of the year. If you're looking for something to read in one or other of these genres, the various short lists form a good place to start.

Regrettably, none of these otherwise healthy genres can compete with the Booker in terms of publicity, and the chief reason for that is no doubt the relative size of their prizes. If only their management committees could rustle up a sponsor who was prepared to offer £50,000 a year for five years or so, perhaps they too could feature on BBC2.

Meanwhile, I hold the view that someone ought to organise an Alternative Booker Prize. After all, there was an Alternative Miss World contest at one point: it was for transvestites, as I recall, and seems to have been rather more fun than the real thing. Perhaps the same might be true of an alternative Booker.

Here are some suggestions for the rules. Entry should be restricted to mss which come accompanied by at least 40 letters of rejection from publishers and agents. Only the first 10 pages may be submitted (more being entirely superfluous, as any slush-pile reader knows). Entries to be posted on a web site somewhere. And voting to be by popular acclaim. The prize would probably have to be the sheer fame and glory.

The winner, I suspect, might be at least as interesting as some of the books entered for the real thing.

By the way, I am two thirds of the way through Neal Stephenson's The System of the World (part three of his Baroque trilogy). And the idea that there is, somewhere on the Booker short list, a novel which is even half as bold, interesting, inventive, scholarly, funny, and just all-round entertaining, is, I fear, too silly to be worth discussing.

And no, I am not about to labour my way through the Booker short list in order to verify my confident assertion. But thank you for making the suggestion. Should you wish to make a comparison yourself, Uncle Ted Smart will sell you all six of the Booker short list for a mere £30.

Bargains for some

The Book People is the name of a bookselling operation run in the UK by one Ted Smart -- and a very smart fellow he is.

Ted Smart operates like this. He buys books cheap (and more of that in a minute). Then he organises a team of agents who take 20 or 30 sample copies and deliver them to an office, or a factory, or a dentist's surgery. People who work in or visit the office or whatever can then look at these sample copies, decided if they want to buy an unmarked copy of same, and put their name on a list. After a week or so, the agent comes back, collects the sample copies, and goes off to collect sufficient supplies of the books ordered. A few days later he delivers them and collects the payment.

There are no shops involved anywhere in this enterprise, and, although there is a web site and there are newspaper advertisements, I suspect that the bulk of business is found through agents, as described above.

The main point of the operation is that books are available to readers dirt cheap. As far as the book buyer is concerned they are getting genuine bargains.

Bearing all this in mind, let us have a look at The Book People's Christmas catalogue. If you live in the UK and you haven't seen one yet, don't worry, you will before long. It will drop out of a newspaper or a magazine, or perhaps even come to you through the post.

Many of the early pages deal with kids' stuff, because it is a Christmas catalogue after all. But a few pages on we find, for instance, the Times Atlas of the World available for £15. The recommended retail price (RRP) is £75. A page or two later we have Being Jordan (a recent big seller) for £6.99, while the RRP is £16.99. And further on still you can buy a bumper bundle: 10 paperback novels, with a total RRP of £69.90, all yours for £9.99. The books are not recent issues, but they are by respectable names.

I repeat: for the buyer, these are bargains. The paperback bundle of 10 includes, for instance, works by Beryl Bainbridge, Iain Banks, Jane Gardam, and Christopher Brookmyre.

I think we can also assume that Mr Smart has done his arithmetic properly, and that he is earning a decent profit on each sale. And nobody has put a gun to the publishers' heads, so they are not unhappy either. Customer, Ted Smart, and publisher, they are all smiling.

But what, I find myself asking (and not for the first time), what of the poor bloody author? How does he/she fare in this enterprise?

In his FT survey of the book trade which I mentioned yesterday, John Sutherland describes The Book People with admiration, and states that Ted Smart 'buys titles in bulk, at up to 60% discount.' What does that mean?

Well, I would expect it to mean that, if the RRP of a book is £10, Ted Smart buys it at a discount of 60% of that figure, i.e. he pays £4 for it. Which would presumably enable him to sell it at say £6, which is a heavily reduced price from the customer's point of view.

However, even a few moments' contemplation of the figures that I have quoted from the Christmas catalogue show that this is obvious nonsense. If Ted Smart was buying the Times Atlas at a 60% discount he would be paying £30 for it. But he is selling it for £15. As for the paperbacks, 60% off the RRP would give Smart a cost of just under £28, but he is selling the whole package of 10 for £9.99.

So, it follows with inexorable logic that, on average, Ted Smart is negotiating a whole lot more than 60% discount. I can see no reason to suppose that any of the examples that I have given are loss leaders, so let us examine the arithmetic of the novel package more closely.

The buyer pays £9.99, and carriage is extra. I will ignore carriage, though Ted Smart may well arrange things so that he makes a turn on that income too; quite a few booksellers do. We will just look at the money paid for the books.

How much of that £9.99 do you think Ted Smart has paid for the books, and how much is gross profit for his company? Well, it's anybody's guess, but if you told me that the deal was costed at 50/50 I wouldn't be surprised. In that case, The Book People would be paying the publishers £5. For our present purposes, let us err on the publishers' side, and assume that the split is two thirds and one third. In other words, the publishers get £6.66 per package, give or take a penny. Since there are 10 books in the package, that means that each publisher, on average, gets 67 pence per book. (And, as suggested, it could be less.)

How much of that 67 pence goes to the author, do you imagine?

The answer, of course, is that everything depends on the contract. But it sure as hell isn't going to be very much. For a start, 67p probably doesn't even cover the cost of printing the book, though the actual unit cost will depend on how many were printed in the first place. Long runs result in lower unit costs.

I have just had a look at Publishing Agreements (now edited by Charles Clark and Lynette Owen). Publishing Agreements is the standard UK reference book on publishing contracts. I don't have a bang up to date edition, but terms for authors have generally got worse in recent years, so my 1993 edition is probably a fair guide.

What it says there, in the 'model' contract between publisher and author, is that, one year after a book has appeared, the publisher shall have the right to dispose of copies as a remainder or overstock. If the price obtained is more than the cost of production, the author will get 10% of the proceeds. So, with enormous good fortune, a writer whose book is included in Ted Smart's 'bargain bundle' may get as much as 6p or 7p per book.

However, it is much more likely, I suspect, that the 67p obtained by the publisher is less than the cost of production. And what does the 'model' contract say about that? It says 'On disposal of stock at or below the cost of production, no royalty shall be payable.'

So the author gets Zero. Zilch. Nothing.

All you budding authors out there have been warned.